Tag: Nazi Germany

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Sobibor

The largest successful escape from a Nazi death camp

Sobibor is a 2018 Russian war drama film co-written, directed by and starring Konstantin Khabensky. The movie, also starring Christopher Lambert, was released in Russia in May of 2018. This film was selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards but was not nominated.

The film is based on the true story of a 1943 uprising in the Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland. The main character of the movie is the Soviet-Jewish soldier Alexander Pechersky, a lieutenant in the Soviet army. In October 1943, Pechersky was captured by the Nazis and deported to the Sobibor death camp, where Jews were being exterminated in gas chambers. In less than a month, Alexander was able to plan an international uprising of prisoners from Poland and Western Europe. This uprising resulted in the only successful large-scale escape of prisoners from a Nazi death camp during the war.

Approximately four hundred prisoners escaped the death camp, while about one hundred died in the attempt. Of the four hundred who escaped, about one hundred and fifty were rounded up by the locals and turned back over to the Nazis. The prisoners who remained in the camp as well as those returned to the camp were shortly “liquidated” because of the advancing Soviet army. The Nazis needed to get rid of the evidence.

My thoughts …

This is not the sort of movie you really want to say, “I enjoyed.” However, it was fascinating, and it was very well done. I have seen a few Russian films in the past, including Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944), and they do have a knack for creating gritty, depressing films that seem to highlight the centuries of struggle and deprivation that is life in Russia. In that regard, this film does not disappoint.

This film is in Russian with English subtitles. Not a problem for me. I’d rather that than have the movie dubbed over in English and actor’s lip movements not match the words. Just a pet peeve of mine …

I have also read a lot of non-fiction about Hitler’s Third Reich, its treatment of “non-Aryans” and other non-desirables, as well as the atrocities of the SS. I think this film very accurately portrays the callous indifference of the SS, their lack of any moral conscience, and penchant for sadistic brutality. The fact that the SS (as well as Hitler himself) was fed a diet of methamphetamine, which kept them energetic, oblivious to all but the most severe injuries or pain, and erased any sense of humanity they may have had is clearly shown.

I also liked how the film portrayed the differences in strategies of the camp’s inmates in trying to survive. Of course, you had the kapos, the inmates who turned on their own and served their Nazi masters by helping them run the camp. Then you had those who, despite all the evidence, refused to accept what was going on, clinging to the false hope that compliance would lead to survival. And finally, you had those who saw clearly what was happening, and that, short of the war ending and Germany losing, the only way to survive was to escape.

If you would not, or could not, watch Schindler’s List, this is not a movie for you. It is also not a movie for young children. However, if World War II history, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, heroic efforts, and the fact that real evil does exist in the world are topics that intrigue you, this may be a film for you. I tend to be one of the latter because I truly believe that people who forget history tend to repeat it.

I give this film 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Book Reviews

Blue Ring Assassins

Berlin 1939 – 1943
From the smoking ruins of a bombed Berlin brothel, three shocked and injured female survivors are taken to a secluded training facility by Nazi officer, Gruppenführer Watler Schellenberg. They’re not there for official business but for medical treatment.

Trained by the SS officer in all aspects of espionage, the women are desperate to survive. They turn the tables on their armed captors and kill them. After covering their tracks, the women return to ply the only trade they know… with an added twist. Somehow these ‘sisters in arms’ escape the attention of the Nazis, despite the high rank of their victim, and their lucrative business thrives.

They haven’t escaped everyone’s notice, though. British Intelligence was monitoring Schellenberg’s operations for some time, and their attention has zeroed in on the three women. They dispatch one of their top male agents to make contact…

My thoughts …

I enjoyed the story very much. And I like how the story was told through the eyes of the three main characters; Hannah, Heidi, and Petra. You really get to know these characters well and can feel their fear, anger, frustration, despair, and desire for justice. You are quickly caught up in their lives.

This novel is also a fascinating blend of fact and fiction, with a unique plot. There are exciting twists and turns around every corner. Readers also get a real look inside Germany, and the suffering of the German people brought about by Hitler’s ambitious plans for Aryan “Lebensraum.”

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Book Reviews

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Third ReichI first read this history of the Third Reich many years ago when I was a high school student. It was a fascinating book back then. I decided to read it again just a little while ago. It is an imposing book with 1280 pages. Since I have aged a bit since I read it last and my eyes are not what they used to be, I bought the book on Audible.com and listened to it instead. It is still imposing … 57+ hours of reading time.  It took several long distance trips to complete it.

History Unfolding

This book is packed with documented history,  William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist and war correspondent who was present in Germany when the things he is writing about were actually taking place. He heard many of the speeches, read the newspaper articles, was present at press conferences and historic meetings, and talked to Nazi government officials.

One of the best things about this book is that it has a riveting narrative and does not simply present historical details to the reader. Shirer weaves them into an engaging narrative that really makes it hard to put the book down. The reader actually reads the notes from staff meetings, journal entries, battle orders signed by Adolf Hitler, and more. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years,

Ignore History … And You’re Doomed to Repeat It.

Why did I reread this book? We are at a time in our country’s history where skin heads and white supremacists are battling with black clad. masked Antifa members. It bears an eerie resemblance to the National Socialists battling the Communists in pre-WW II Germany. We even have some people fanning the flames of racial discord and class warfare. American and its people are better than this. Reminding ourselves of what has occurred in the past can help us prevent it in the future.

Political

The Other Side of Racism

Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857), Josiah C...
Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857), Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon implied that “Negroes” were a creational rank between “Greeks” and chimpanzees. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just wondering about something.  If, no matter how dishonest, misleading, or corrupt a president is, and no matter how badly his ideology-based policies are hurting the country and destroying the economy; you blindly stick by him because of his color … isn’t that also racism?

Racism is simply the most primitive form of collectivism.  Racism is about assigning moral, social or political significance based on a man’s genetic lineage … the idea that a man’s intellectual and character traits are produced and perpetuated by his internal body chemistry.  This means that, in practice, being a racist means that you judge your fellow man, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of his ancestors.

This sounds  exactly like what the University of Minnesota’s new racism campaign and many angry African-Americans do to white people.  Therefore, they may actually be guilty of racism in its most basic and purest form!

Racism ignores the single most important attribute found in Mankind, that one attribute that distinguishes Mankind from all other species indigenous to this planet … Man’s  ability to reason and make his own choices.

According to Ayn Rand:

The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to “protect the family name” (as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another) — the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third-cousin gave a concert at Carnegie Hall (as if the achievements of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another) — the parents who search genealogical trees in order to evaluate their prospective sons-in-law — the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history — all these are samples of racism, the atavvistic manifestations of a doctrine whose full expression is the tribal warfare of prehistorical savages, the wholesale slaughter of Nazi Germany, the atrocities of today’s so-called “newly-emerging nations.”

“A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race — and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.”